Comcast down 5%

Comcast reported a 5 per cent drop in quarterly profit with lower film division sales, but growth in its business services and high-speed internet units.

Q2 revenue rose 2.8 per cent to $19.27 billion from a year earlier and slightly exceeded the analysts’ average estimate.

Net income fell to $2.03 billion, or 83 cents per share, from $2.14 billion. Philadelphia-based Comcast lost 4,000 pay-TV subscribers in the quarter, but that was less than the year-earlier loss of 69,000.

To keep cable customers from switching to lower-priced video streaming services such as Hulu, Comcast has been investing to improve customer service and enhance the capabilities of its set-top boxes and TV interface. It said in early July that it would let customers stream Netflix Inc’s online content through its X1 cable-TV service in coming months.

Revenue rose 6 per cent to $12.44 billion for the cable unit and jumped 17 per cent to $1.36 billion for business services. Internet revenue increased 8.6 per cent to $3.37 billion as customer additions rose 22.3 per cent to 220,000.

Revenue in the NBCUniversal division, which includes news cable networks NBC and Telemundo, film studios and theme parks, fell 1.8 per cent to $7.1 billion.